Oh, long night!

Okay, it's so late/ early, so I have to try to make this quick and cut out details. But first, I forgot to mention yesterday about how after volunteering at Tzu Chi, Director Tsai took us to a food stand to buy us some "stinky tofu" to try. Apparently everyone else had heard about it before. Nancy, Luke, and Kaylene said that they all had people tell them they needed to try it, that it smells really bad, but it tastes really good. They were right about the smell, but they were way wrong about the taste. Kaylene understood me when I described it this way, "it tastes the way a farm smells." I don't know if that's descriptive enough for anyone else, but that is the only way to put it. Nancy didn't mind it too much, she ate the rest of the box when I only ate one piece.

Okay, today I went for a run along a different trail. This one is a little farther away, flatter, and not in the trees, so I actually felt the sun on my run this morning. We stopped off at a breakfast store on the way back and got a waffle. Ehh, reheated waffles that have been sitting in the fridge for I don't know how long, nothing on top. Not my favorite. But I also bought a tarro roll to try. I loved the tarro rolls in Hawaii, so I was excited to get one. But, I bought it from the steamed roll place, so it was a steamed roll, plus it was stuffed with tarro paste. So, it wasn't horrible, but it was no Hawaiian roll.

Classes went pretty well today, Teacher Steffanie (the Chinese teacher for the 3 year olds) stepped in with suggests a lot today. Eh, they were good suggestions, so I went with it. And then today at lunch, we had another meeting. Yuling said we would have one every other week, but we most definitely had one last week. Luckily, we spent a little more then half the time talking about what we would be doing and practicing with the kids for graduation on June 14th. But, the second half of the hour long meeting was...... yep,you guessed it.... rag on Brooke's lessons for this week time. I had taken down paper to take notes, so I looked like I really appreciated the suggestions they were giving me, and I did appreciate it more today then last week, but it was hard because today they didn't even hide the fact that it was all about me. They pointed out specific parts in my lessons and mocked them. Um, yeah, not so helpful, thanks, that lesson's already passed. Oh well, I don't have time to sit and vent about that, plus, like I said, I did take notes and I do plan on using the notes to come up with better lessons.

After school I had three tutories, and Nancy's and my schedule didn't match up, so I had to eat by myself. I went to our night market and got one of those greasy french toast stuffed bread things. I decided to just eat it there because I didn't have anything better to do, but it was kind of awkward, and a lot bit funny because there were a few people at tables around me who I caught staring at me, so I'd wave and they'd laugh, but they would still stare. Then, there were a couple of people who apparently didn't know what they wanted to eat and so they would walk past me multiple times and look, whisper, and look.

Tonight it was Nancy's and my plan to go hit up a club in Hualien because we heard there was a pretty good one and we thought it would be funny. We went into a pub (that's where the dancing is supposed to take place, they don't really have clubs), but there was a live "band" which turned out to be one guy who was singing slow songs. There was definitely no dancing, and because we didn't order anything, we were asked to leave. But, it was 250 for a soda, or 250 for a beer. Um, do you see anything wrong with that? I do! (PS, 25o NT$ is about $7 in the US)

But, outside of the pub, these guys on a scooter said hello, like many people do around here. So I said hi, but these guys didn't keep driving like everyone else, they stopped and tried to have a conversation with us. One of them spoke English and the other didn't. They asked what we were doing and we told them we were trying to go dancing, but that place wasn't any good. So, they asked if we wanted to go eat food. We said sure, and we ended up going to McDonald's and only getting drinks. We talked to them for a while and it was kind of awkward because the side conversations were in different languages (ie, I would have a side conversation with Nancy in English, and the other two would talk in Chinese). Plus, the second guy really didn't speak a whole lot of Chinese.

*Note to parentals and all other worriers, this isn't scary, we did not get the creeper vibe from the guys and we were not going very far, if all else failed, we would have walked home.*
They left to go get a second scooter so that we could all go to the beach. We rode with them to a beach and they were so confused when Nancy and I rolled up our pant legs to stand in the water. People here really do not understand why anyone would want to swim in the ocean. They all think that if you want to go swimming, you just go to the pool. After a bigger wave came and got the bottom of our pants wet, we were no longer in the mood to stand in the water, so Nancy asked if we could drive their scooters. Guess what? They said yes. So, we got on and did a few circles in the parking lot. When we were done circling, we pulled up so the guys could get back on. They hopped on the back and told us to drive back. I was slightly apprehensive, but I drove. I made it back safe, and didn't get pulled over by a cop. Which is a very good thing because not only do I not have an international driver's license, I definitely wasn't carrying my CA license with me, I wasn't planning on going farther then down the road to dance. So, now Nancy and I already have experience riding scooters, which will come in handy for our trip to Green Island on June 7th-8th, and we made some new friends (who asked for our phone number, but luckily we don't have cell phones, so they asked for our emails, but I'll be okay if they forget and never talk to us again).

Told you, it was a busy night.